Preface

Nowadays, immunization still plays a crucial role in maintaining human health, as it can be effectively employed for prophylaxis of various dangerous infections and erase many lifethreatening diseases. Thus, knowledge on immunization appears important not only to pro‐ fessionals who can use it for better carrying out their special work, but also to the general public, who will be readier to accept immunization after making acquaintance with the rele‐ vant information. In this book, authors from different countries introduced state-of-the-art advances in VADSs that are developed with various NPs, such as liposomes, non-degradable inorganic NPs (iNPs), VLPs, emulsions, ISCOMs and polymeric NPs, for treatment of differ‐ ent types of diseases, mainly infections and cancer. The content includes: design principles, formulations and rationales of these NPs, which have been devised as an effective VADS able to stimulate potent Ag-specific humoral and cellular immune responses; the applications of VADSs in infection prophylaxis, as well as cancer immunotherapy; problems and their reso‐ lution in both human and poultry immunization; and, also, the mathematical model for assay of the basic immunization problem (BIP) that is observed from a financial point of view.

Wu et al described the VADS constructed with the small molecule-self-assembled NPs, such as inorganic NPs (iNPs), emulsions, liposomes, and ISCOMs, which are well designed for the development of subunit vaccines able to not only deliver vaccine ingredients to immune cells but also direct the immunoresponse toward a Th1 and Th2 balanced pathway to estab‐ lish both humoral and cellular immunity.

Liu and coworkers introduced NPs formulated with polymeric materials, such as poly(lac‐ tic-co-glycolic acid), viral proteins, chitosan, hyaluronic acid, and polystyrene, with some also bearing intrinsic adjuvanticity, which are widely employed as a VADS and have shown great potential in developing various subunit vaccines. Particularly, the polymeric NPs engi‐ neered with functional materials possess many features, such as targeting delivery, lyso‐ some escape, anti-damaging protection and ability to guide immune reactions toward a Th1 and Th2 pathway, which are crucial for establishing humoral and cellular immunity.

Shen and colleagues presented a chapter on VADS used for cancer immunotherapy, which has recently been rapidly developed, at least partially, as a result of the advancement in both exploring powerful tools for identification of tumor-associated antigens (tAgs) and reveal‐ ing the mechanisms underlying immunoresponses toward tumors. Notably, cancer immu‐ notherapy has already shown remarkable therapeutic potentials, as evidenced by the striking outcomes of clinical applications of the adoptive cell transfer (ACT) and the im‐ mune checkpoint inhibitors, which has significantly encouraged researchers to formulate tAgs with NPs to form a VADS and to provide an alternative way to enhancing the efficacy

of cancer immunotherapy as well as to mitigate the off-target toxicity of tAgs. Especially when engineered with some special functions, such as targeting APCs, reeducating tumorassociated macrophages with tumor-suppressing properties, and triggering CTLs in large numbers, the NC-VADSs show a big potential in killing tumor cells.

In summary, this book written by authors from several countries introduces comprehensive knowledge on immunization, including state-of-the-art advances in VADSs; the applications of VADSs for prophylaxis of infectious diseases as well as cancer immunotherapy; the prob‐ lems and their resolutions in both human and poultry immunization; and also, the mathe‐ matical model that can be used for assay of the basic immunization problem (BIP) understood from a finance point of view. Therefore, this book will present a useful reference

**Ning Wang**

Preface IX

**Ting Wang**

School of Pharmacy Anhui Medical University Hefei, Anhui Province, China

School of Food and Bioengineering Hefei University of Technology Hefei, Anhui Province, China

on immunization, VADSs and related strategies for a wide range of readers.

Shaikh provided a chapter aiming at bridging the information gaps about system-level fac‐ tors that are currently impeding the optimal delivery and uptake of immunization services to children through the Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI). In this chapter, the author drew the thematic content based on not only a critical review of the EPI-related international and national reports but also consulting government reports, surveys and publications on health system to generate from the literature the views on financing, governance, service de‐ livery, human resources, information system, and supplies and vaccines, to make certain cru‐ cial conclusions that are useful for setting up EPI with a better immunization coverage, EPI operations and performance and can help in developing a more reasonable EPI.

Sharif emphasized the great importance of poultry immunization, which is of significance for the poultry sector since it provides an economical and efficient way for protection of poultry from lethal infectious diseases. The author reported that, in Pakistan, the poultry sector is of big significance in terms of production of food items such as meat and eggs and is, however, as the second most important sector after the textile industry, also encountered with the challenge of the high incidence of disease outbreaks, which will inevitably result in colossal economic losses. The diseases of commercial and rural poultry include mainly New‐ castle disease (ND), infectious bursal disease (IBD), fowl pox, Marek's disease, infectious bronchitis (IB), avian influenza, and hydropericardium syndrome, of which the outbreaks have also occurred in vaccinated flocks. The author comprehensively reviewed the causes of the immunization failure, which are useful for identifying the prophylactic measures re‐ garding disease outbreaks in poultry flocks, and further highlighted the procedures for suc‐ cessful immunization.

In the last chapter, Zaremba presented a mathematical model for assay of the basic immuni‐ zation problem (BIP) that is understood from a finance point of view with key notions, such as duration and convexity, and illustrated with recently obtained results for guaranteeing immunization. The introduction of a mathematical model may trigger big interest among medical scientists to handle BIP with an alternative strategy, though a big challenge may confront medical researchers in understanding and applying the mysterious mathematical formulas for handling BIPs, e.g., the author explained, with numerous mathematical equa‐ tions, that BIP relies on a construction of such a bond portfolio (BP), meaning a selection of individual bonds with the present value of C dollars that the single liability to pay L dollars q years from now, will be discharged by means of BP (a patient, due to paid immunization, will return to health at time q), no matter what random shift a(t) of current interest rates s(t) (a particular disease) will occur in the future. Nevertheless, the author suggested that certain finance notions, such as duration and convexity of a bond portfolio, might give extra insight to medical researchers working in the immunization area both into BIP from a finance view‐ point and into similar problems in medicine. Also, considerable attention is also paid in this chapter to certain mathematical notions (linear independence of vectors, base of a linear space, a Hilbert space, triangular functions) because of their successful applications to solv‐ ing problems in bond portfolio for immunization.

In summary, this book written by authors from several countries introduces comprehensive knowledge on immunization, including state-of-the-art advances in VADSs; the applications of VADSs for prophylaxis of infectious diseases as well as cancer immunotherapy; the prob‐ lems and their resolutions in both human and poultry immunization; and also, the mathe‐ matical model that can be used for assay of the basic immunization problem (BIP) understood from a finance point of view. Therefore, this book will present a useful reference on immunization, VADSs and related strategies for a wide range of readers.

of cancer immunotherapy as well as to mitigate the off-target toxicity of tAgs. Especially when engineered with some special functions, such as targeting APCs, reeducating tumorassociated macrophages with tumor-suppressing properties, and triggering CTLs in large

Shaikh provided a chapter aiming at bridging the information gaps about system-level fac‐ tors that are currently impeding the optimal delivery and uptake of immunization services to children through the Expanded Program on Immunization (EPI). In this chapter, the author drew the thematic content based on not only a critical review of the EPI-related international and national reports but also consulting government reports, surveys and publications on health system to generate from the literature the views on financing, governance, service de‐ livery, human resources, information system, and supplies and vaccines, to make certain cru‐ cial conclusions that are useful for setting up EPI with a better immunization coverage, EPI

Sharif emphasized the great importance of poultry immunization, which is of significance for the poultry sector since it provides an economical and efficient way for protection of poultry from lethal infectious diseases. The author reported that, in Pakistan, the poultry sector is of big significance in terms of production of food items such as meat and eggs and is, however, as the second most important sector after the textile industry, also encountered with the challenge of the high incidence of disease outbreaks, which will inevitably result in colossal economic losses. The diseases of commercial and rural poultry include mainly New‐ castle disease (ND), infectious bursal disease (IBD), fowl pox, Marek's disease, infectious bronchitis (IB), avian influenza, and hydropericardium syndrome, of which the outbreaks have also occurred in vaccinated flocks. The author comprehensively reviewed the causes of the immunization failure, which are useful for identifying the prophylactic measures re‐ garding disease outbreaks in poultry flocks, and further highlighted the procedures for suc‐

In the last chapter, Zaremba presented a mathematical model for assay of the basic immuni‐ zation problem (BIP) that is understood from a finance point of view with key notions, such as duration and convexity, and illustrated with recently obtained results for guaranteeing immunization. The introduction of a mathematical model may trigger big interest among medical scientists to handle BIP with an alternative strategy, though a big challenge may confront medical researchers in understanding and applying the mysterious mathematical formulas for handling BIPs, e.g., the author explained, with numerous mathematical equa‐ tions, that BIP relies on a construction of such a bond portfolio (BP), meaning a selection of individual bonds with the present value of C dollars that the single liability to pay L dollars q years from now, will be discharged by means of BP (a patient, due to paid immunization, will return to health at time q), no matter what random shift a(t) of current interest rates s(t) (a particular disease) will occur in the future. Nevertheless, the author suggested that certain finance notions, such as duration and convexity of a bond portfolio, might give extra insight to medical researchers working in the immunization area both into BIP from a finance view‐ point and into similar problems in medicine. Also, considerable attention is also paid in this chapter to certain mathematical notions (linear independence of vectors, base of a linear space, a Hilbert space, triangular functions) because of their successful applications to solv‐

numbers, the NC-VADSs show a big potential in killing tumor cells.

operations and performance and can help in developing a more reasonable EPI.

cessful immunization.

VIII Preface

ing problems in bond portfolio for immunization.

#### **Ning Wang**

School of Food and Bioengineering Hefei University of Technology Hefei, Anhui Province, China

#### **Ting Wang**

School of Pharmacy Anhui Medical University Hefei, Anhui Province, China

**Chapter 1**

**Provisional chapter**

**Introductory Chapter: Immunization - Vaccine**

**Introductory Chapter: Immunization - Vaccine** 

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.81981

Immunization plays a key role in maintaining human health as it saves millions of lives in the most economical way from lethal pathogens and other fatal diseases each year, thanks to the advanced development of model vaccines, which are biological preparations containing an antigenic agent that resembles a disease-causing microorganism to stimulate the host's immune system, thus providing active acquired immunity to a particular disease and destroying it [1, 2]. Since Jenner's pioneering inoculations in the late eighteenth century, vaccines have been successfully developed to combat various diseases and each year saved numerous lives from, mostly, lethal infections and now also certain cancers [3, 4]. Especially, taking advantage of the tools discovered in microbiology and immunology, vaccines have recently obtained great achievements as demonstrated by their successful performances in conquering some formidable pathogens, such as smallpox and rabies, which are used to claim many lives. However, the list of pathogens for which there exist no vaccines is still long, and, in particular, many pathogens, such as human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), herpes simplex virus (HSV), and Ebola virus (EBV), are still posing a big threat to human life, therefore needing urgently

Vaccines can stimulate the host immune system to develop an armament of immunity capable of clearing the abnormalities after administration, because they are developed with the antigenic components that are featured by pathogens or neoplasms and usually include three types: the live attenuated microbes, killed microbes, and just purified antigens (Ags) of microbes or neoplasms [6]. The former two consisting of live attenuated or killed microbes are the conventional vaccines with high immunogenicity but, unfortunately, are also linked to a relatively poor safety profile as they possess the potential to revert the virulence and induce the drifted immune responses leading to incontrollable immunity as well as unacceptable inflammations. In contrast, the third one with purified Ags, called a subunit vaccine, has

> © 2016 The Author(s). Licensee InTech. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2018 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use,

distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

**Adjuvant Delivery System and Strategies**

**Adjuvant Delivery System and Strategies**

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

the effective products to cope with their infections [5].

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

Ning Wang and Ting Wang

**1. Introduction**

Ning Wang and Ting Wang

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.81981

#### **Introductory Chapter: Immunization - Vaccine Adjuvant Delivery System and Strategies Introductory Chapter: Immunization - Vaccine Adjuvant Delivery System and Strategies**

DOI: 10.5772/intechopen.81981

Ning Wang and Ting Wang Ning Wang and Ting Wang

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.81981
